


There's No Devil On One Shoulder And Angel On The Other, They're Just Two Normal People

by nonbinaryvision



Category: Fantastic Four (Comicverse), Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Alternate Universe - Family, Domestic Fluff, DoomReedWeek2020, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, M/M, Reed Richards is a Good Dad, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Victor von Doom is a Good Dad, parenting, thats the premise, think of this as the housewife doctor doom au you never knew you needed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:46:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27065851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonbinaryvision/pseuds/nonbinaryvision
Summary: Victor considered himself an adequate parent. He was aware that sometimes he could be rather emotionally stunted, and could appear a little bit cold, and maybe could be a bit more comforting when they were hurt, but on a whole, he felt like he did a good job. Franklin gave him tight hugs when he came home and Valeria would cheerfully gurgle away when she saw him, so he must’ve been doing something right.At the moment, Victor did not feel like an adequate parent.----alternate title - "Victor von Doom vs Parenting". for DoomReed Week 2020 day 3, which is domestic bliss!
Relationships: Reed Richards & Franklin Richards & Valeria Richards, Reed Richards/Victor von Doom, Victor von Doom & Franklin Richards & Valeria Richards
Comments: 5
Kudos: 13





	There's No Devil On One Shoulder And Angel On The Other, They're Just Two Normal People

Victor considered himself an adequate parent. He was aware that sometimes he could be rather emotionally stunted, and could appear a little bit cold, and maybe could be a bit more comforting when they were hurt, but on a whole, he felt like he did a good job. Franklin gave him tight hugs when he came home and Valeria would cheerfully gurgle away when she saw him, so he must’ve been doing  _ something _ right.

At the moment, Victor did not feel like an adequate parent.

Franklin, for whatever ungodly reason, had decided that instead of getting into his pajamas after taking his regular clothes off, that he wanted to remain fully naked instead, and seemed quite determined to evade every one of Victor’s attempts to catch him and wrestle him into his spiderman-printed pajamas. He was usually so well behaved (maybe a little boisterous but that was to be expected with a boy his age), but something manic had taken hold of him, and chasing a boy who manipulated reality on a whim and could run through walls whenever he wanted was proving difficult. Especially with Valeria making a ruckus behind him.

Valeria, young, sweet Valeria, with her intelligent eyes and milky breath, was wailing loud enough that her cries seemed to reverb in the air, small fists balled and hitting the sides of her chair in rage. She must’ve been overtired, poor thing, or maybe she was too hot, or hungry, or needed a nappy change, or a horrible combination of all four; whatever the reason, she was screaming to the heavens, her face gone a blotched red and her tiny feet kicking in the air.

Victor scooped her up from her chair, which didn’t seem to make things  _ worse _ , but her weeping didn’t cease, even as he bobbed her gently in an attempt to calm her down. To be fair to her, it was probably difficult to calm down when your elder brother kept blowing raspberries of defiance and was beginning to throw down chairs and leaping over them in what Victor imagined to be an attempt at provoking him further. 

“Franklin-” he tried to yell, to regain some kind of control, but the volume of his voice ended up startling Val, whose cries grew louder still. Franklin ran past him, close enough that he could have swiped at him had he not had two hands cradling Valeria, who seemed at best unresponsive to his swaying, at worst was actively distressed by it. It was difficult to tell. 

He watched Franklin run around the table and repositioned his grip on Val. Without his supporting hand, her head was flopping a little, so he had to awkwardly position his arm lest he hurt her somehow.

(Babies, Victor knew, were incredibly elastic, resilient little things. There was no way a bit of hypotonia was going to break her, but there was a subconscious fear that couldn’t be shaken, no matter how much Victor wished otherwise.)

This time, as Franklin ran past, Victor grabbed his arm, and held it as tight as he could without seriously hurting him. “Let go!” he protested, thrashing around in his grip and weakly kicking at his leg. Valeria began to wriggle in his remaining arm, seeking escape, and Victor couldn’t deal with both of them, his grasp on the situation, slippery and unsteady as it had been, growing weaker by the second-

And in the midst of all this pandemonium, Reed arrived back. He stared, somewhat blankly, at the chaos in front of him, which had paused for a moment, at least on Franklin and Victor’s part; Val, bless her, had still not fully developed proper vision, and therefore did not notice the newcomer.

Then, with a frantic “Daddy!”, Franklin wrenched his hand from Victor’s grip, and ran over to hug his father. Reed blinked at him for a moment, then smiled gently and started to comb his hand through his blond locks. Victor took the time to focus more on Valeria, cooing slightly at her and trying not to feel too ashamed at being unable to put two children to sleep peacefully, or, at the very least, not have that shame show on his face. For the first time today, Victor seemed to be in luck as Val finally started to calm down, albeit still whimpering and red faced but at least now he could hear himself think.

“Why are you still up, kiddo?” he heard Reed ask, who’d assumed a crouching position in front of a still-naked Franklin. “And why aren’t your jammies on?”

“Didn’t wanna put them on,” Franklin said stubbornly, stamping his foot indignantly in what was probably the last remnants of his tantrum.

“Why not?”

He couldn’t make out what Franklin responded with, but Reed stood up and took Franklin’s hand in his own. “We can pick out new ones,” he offered. “Tell you what, we’ll pick out some fluffy ones and put them on the radiator, so they’re nice and warm and soft. That sound good?”

Franklin nodded, sullen, but resigned. 

Victor held up Valeria higher, who was by now almost completely calm, half-dozing on his shoulder. Which would have been great, was Victor not aware that if he didn’t feed and change her now, she would no doubt wake up screaming again in the hour, and that was something he did not have the emotional energy to deal with.

He walked off with Val, gaining at least  _ some _ sense of accomplishment when he changed her with only a few whimpers of protest. It didn’t do much to soothe the sense of failure he had, but he would take what he could get. In retrospect, it would have done well not to act so confident when Reed asked if he was  _ sure _ he could handle putting the two down, would have been better if he hadn’t scoffed and assured him “ _ I’ve faced the likes of Kang the Conqueror and Mephisto, Richa- Reed. I can handle two small children _ .” Still, what was done was done, and at least he was proving himself somewhat competent as he moved on from the changing station to getting her formula. 

She followed the movement of his hand as he scooped the powder in, which was admittedly cute to see, and gave him a toothless smile as he vigorously shook the bottle. He smiled back at her, tired but happy; he’d take anything he could get so long as it wasn’t her screaming loud enough that he feared going deaf. 

He made his way to her bedroom, less hasty than he had been before and watching her curious hazel eyes follow the scar running down his eyebrow to the side of his jaw. Even as he held the bottle to her lips and watched as she gulped on it, her eyes didn’t stray from the jagged lines, gurgling cheerfully and dribbling milk as she smiled.

He burped her without incident, but just as he set up the monitor, Reed came in with a shy-looking Franklin peering beside his leg, finally dressed in some Hulk-themed pajamas and his dressing gown. “Frank wants to read a story with Val, if that’s alright.” Reed smiled apologetically before he turned to Franklin. “And remember, don’t make any pictures, OK?”

He pouted. “Why not? Val likes ‘em?”

Reed’s kind, patient expression did not waver. “That’s the problem, kiddo, she likes them a little too much. They might make her excited, and we want to put her down easy tonight, alright?”

Franklin’s pout deepened.

“Maybe next time, Frank,” he promised, kissing him on the forehead.

Reed turned back to Victor and Valeria. “Narnia sound good, princess?” he cooed at her, before facing Victor. “I’ll read, don’t worry”

He shook his head. “No, I want to,” he said determinedly, taking the book from Reed’s relaxed fingers and gesturing for Franklin to come join them on the couch. Surprisingly Franklin went without protest, and even more surprisingly, snuggled into his side and waited for him to start. Reed joined his other side, and rested his head on Victor’s shoulder. Behind him, he felt (and heard) Reed stretch his arm over so that he held Victor and Franklin at the same time.

He cleared his throat, and prayed to whatever deity would hear and respect his calls that his voice wouldn’t waver with how intensely loved he felt.

“Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. This story is about something that…”

**Author's Note:**

> can u tell i wrote this at one in the morning-
> 
> ANYWAY thank you for reading and thank you to my amazing friend @solipism-lemonade who read over this for me when i sent it at like. 4 in the morning lmao. zi is an angel and also very very talented you should all go check hir out rn.
> 
> written for doomreed week n i especially suggest you read the other fics others have made for the other days because they are all so very talented i cannot recommend them enough.
> 
> title is from the car seat headrest song "bodys" which absolutely slaps and you should listen to it immediately it goes so so unbelievably hard


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